Young Lindsey
by VanyaElda
Summary: Young Lindsey McDonald comes home from school without a clue of the grief that awaits him. One shot.


Though the day was rather cold and dreary, a ten year old Lindsey McDonald was not about to let that get him down. With a smile on his face which was red from the wind, he trudged the same trail through the snow he had taken earlier that day to get to the bus stop.

When he had lived in the city, Lindsey had gone to a large public school five days a week and helped his daddy in the fields on the weekends. Now that his family had been forced to move to a farm that was willing to give them housing, they were no where near a school. Instead, Lindsey made the half-hour bus trip to a county school during the months that every hand wasn't needed in the fields. Those of Lindsey's brothers and sisters who were old enough went to school as well, but they were each battling their own stage of the flu and he missed almost a week of class apiece.

His clothes were thread-bare and his hair was a floppy mess beneath the knitted hat atop his head, but Lindsey had simply accepted long ago that his family was poor. That was why he was so aggressive about school. Each day was another step closer to getting him and his family out the backend Oklahoma hell hole that he called home.

"Darn it!" Lindsey hissed as the wet cold of the snow slush on the rotting steps splashed through the gash in his shoddy brown shoe and the hole in his grayish sock to sting his skin.

When he reached the front door, Lindsey promptly stomped his feet on the soggy mat that laid on the porch. Swinging open the metal door with a torn screen and pushing through the creaky one that was beyond, Lindsey entered his family's humble home. Shedding his coat which was two sizes much too big and covered with patches, he broke off in a jog across the small front room for another as fast as his young legs would carry him--failing to notice that the typical scent of supper was missing from the air. Pausing just outside the door, he slipped a folded piece of paper out of the school book he held and grinned broadly.

" 'annah, guess what I made yew today?" Lindsey said cheerfully as he bounded into the bedroom.

The young boy was fully expecting to see his four year old sister bundled up in their bed looking just as miserable and pale as she had when he had left early that afternoon. However, the mop of tangled blonde hair and chipped smile (she had been kicked by a mule that previous summer) were no where to be seen. The bed was stripped of the old tattered horse blankets—they were thick enough to withstand the cold winter nights—to reveal a dingy, smeared mattress with various degrees of extended wear snared across its surface. Frowning, Lindsey dropped the handmade card and book to the sagging bed and retreated back into the dim, cramped room where his twin brothers Ethan and Caleb were currently playing with a rusty toy pickup that his daddy had dug up while holing out their new outhouse in September.

"Momma tode yew two ta keep off that floor," Lindsey scolded the young pair in a big-brother fashion, crossing his arms for added effect as he stared down at the matching scruffy heads.

"Yew ain' Daddy so qui' tryin'!" one of them replied hotly and went back to making sounds for the truck as he trailed it over Lindsey's feet.

"Yeah!" added the other before he made a disturbing noise. It sounded as if he was trying to hack up molasses.

Lindsey's frown deepened. Caleb's cough was just like Hannah's before she had become too sick to leave the bed. Not to mention, she had been retching out her insides for days now. The flu was doing a nasty number on the McDonalds this year. Lindsey was surprised he hadn't caught it yet.

"I ain' gonna let yew stay down there soundin' like that," Lindsey drawled. "Go play on the bed."

The truck banged against Lindsey's heavy shoe as Ethan gave him a rebellious glare. "No!"

"Fine," Lindsey sighed. The two siblings before him weren't necessarily his immediate concern anyhow. "Yew seen 'annah?"

"Went ta see the angels," Caleb mumbled before being lost to his croup once more.

Giving a start, Lindsey stumbled back when the toy connected with his foot a fifth time. "She wha?" His expression was agape, but Lindsey was certain he had heard his brother correctly. He just didn't want to believe he had.

"Momma said the angels're taken 'er," the other twin replied.

Lindsey swallowed hard. It was okay, they were just barely older than five. He was fairly certain he had never listened right at that age. They had just heard wrong. There was no way his momma had said his sister was going to the angels. That would mean… Lindsey shook his head. He didn't want to think of what that meant.

Just then, a very downtrodden Mrs. McDonald entered from the kitchen flanked by Lindsey's oldest siblings Cody and Jacob who led the pale woman to her knitting chair that was shoved into the room next to a piled mattress that was without a frame. She collapsed onto the seat and dropped her face into her hands before she began to shudder as she wept. Cody's little hand tugged at one of her dirty pigtails and Jacob's eyes went large, both looked upset and completely unsure of what do. Lindsey wanted to go to her, but he couldn't seem to will his legs to move and finally croaked "Momma?"

A wail, stifled partly by her trembling fingers, escaped the thirty-something woman. Lindsey was then across the room, slowly reaching out his own shaking hand to her. He jumped when she cried out once more and glanced around to his brothers and sister, four pairs of timid light blue eyes were staring right back at him. Swallowing hard, Lindsey finally rested his hand to his momma's shoulder.

"Momma, where's 'annah?" Lindsey implored fearfully.

Lindsey quickly figured out that his question had been the wrong one. With a shriek, Mrs McDonald dissolved into a moment of insanity as she went into hysterics, sobbing heavily and erratically pulling her blonde hair from its messy bun. Lindsey quailed away and Cody's fingers dug into his arm. Jacob's little voice quavered as he whispered into Lindsey's ear.

The farmer Mr. Willis and his daddy had taken Hannah with them out to the snow covered pasture to a spot not far from the crook where Lindsey had showed Hannah how to skip rocks. The ground was softer there. It would make digging a grave easier.


End file.
